#blog

Beyond the Canvas

5 days ago
1 min

Holocaust Memorial Day

"Memory is the only vaccine against indifference." - Liliana Segre. This post is dedicated to Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, a life senator of the Italian republic and the former President of its Senate. Segre, who had lost her mother when she was only one year old, was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13. Once there, she was separated from her father Alberto, whom she would never see again, and who would be killed a few months later. Her paternal grandparents were a

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Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain, London

Beyond the Canvas

Jan 21
1 min

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain, London

In my mind, a portrait is the depiction of an actual person, someone who has lived. Their portrait was made so their story could be told and so we would know about them, learn about their life. But what happens if the painting, like in the case of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's work, is of a fictional person, someone who only exists in the artist's imagination? Well, I guess perhaps that's the representation of humanity at large. It is none of us and all of us. What I realised whil

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Venini: Luce 1921-1985 at Le Stanze del Vetro, Venice

Beyond the Canvas

Jan 7
1 min

Venini: Luce 1921-1985 at Le Stanze del Vetro, Venice

Writing a review of a show the day before it closes is probably nonsensical, not too mention a tad unfair. I must, however, pay tribute to Le Stanze del Vetro and their consistently superb programming. Nestled in a corner of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, away from the hustle and bustle of San Marco (yes, even in January), this cultural foundation showcases the art of glass making in its many, wonderful forms of expression. The exhibition Venini: Luce 1921-1985 celebrates

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The Sara Baartman effect: objectification of the black female body and misogyny today.

Beyond the Canvas

Dec 20, 2022
2 min

The Sara Baartman effect: objectification of the black female body and misogyny today.

Sara Baartman was born in 1789 near the Gamtoos River in South Africa, home to the Khoikhoi tribe. After emigrating to Cape Town, she became a slave on a farm until, in 1810, she was sold to a British doctor called William Dunlop. The man convinced her to travel to England with him with the promise of a domestic job, and the alleged agreement that Sara would also exhibit her extraordinarily voluptuous body for entertainment purposes. In reality, Sara ended up being showcased

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Beyond the Canvas

Dec 1, 2022
1 min

On World AIDS Day

“I want to be discussed in hushed tones. When people talk about me, I want them to be whispering.’ - Peter Hujar (b.1934 - d.1987) With his powerful black & white portraits of people and animals and raw cityscapes in which he captured the unglamorous areas of New York he used to roam, Peter Hujar remains one of the most influential American photographers. He is known for spearheading an avant-garde group of artists and performers active in the Manhattan subculture of the 197

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Football, human rights, fossil fuels and geopolitics.

Beyond the Canvas

Nov 25, 2022
1 min

Football, human rights, fossil fuels and geopolitics.

The 22nd FIFA World Cup has kicked off. Italy did not qualify for the event, which I'm now almost pleased about as it's all turning into an awful mess for a number of rather obvious reasons. Corruption. Despite the absence of a definitive smoking gun, there is strong evidence that the bidding process was rigged (not for the first time) and that, much to no one's surprise, hefty bribes were paid. Workers' exploitation. The astronomical $220 billion infrastructure budget was ke

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Beyond the Canvas

Aug 14, 2022
2 min

The issue of (female) ageing

You know when you're having a conversation with a friend and the following day you read something that exactly echoes your thoughts articulating them better than you ever could? This morning I randomly found this interview on Libération, in which French writer and journalist Laure Adler states: Je suis vieille et je vous emmerde, meaning I am old and you can go to hell/I don't give a sh*t what you think (translations are seldom straightforward). Adler goes on to say exactly w

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Roe vs Wade overturned: The relentless erasure of women's rights.

Beyond the Canvas

Jun 25, 2022
2 min

Roe vs Wade overturned: The relentless erasure of women's rights.

They've only gone ahead and done it. I'm not even going to get into why those late SCOTUS appointments were so crucial. You know why. Nor am I going to tackle the absurd pro-life vs pro-gun debate. Because what happened yesterday is all about meddling with women's reproductive rights, it's all about control. But also about social status and race. This decision winds back the clock almost 50 years, removing the right to safe pregnancy termination from millions of women. Aborti

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 2, 2022
1 min

On Italian National Day, 02/06/2022

On 11 June 1946, the Italian people voted in an institutional referendum to replace the monarchy with a republic. I won't lie, it was closer than I like to think, but they did it: 12,672,767 votes for the Republic vs 10,688,305 for the Monarchy. Importantly, this was also the first time that women voted at national level. As the journalist Anna Garofalo recalls: "The ballots that arrived at home inviting us to do our duty had a silent and peremptory authority. We turned them

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Beyond the Canvas

Feb 24, 2022
1 min

Ukrainian artists: Marina Skugareva

There are moments in life when our fear is such that we scramble for ways of taming it, in the hope that this crippling fear will somehow dissolve. And when we feel at our most powerless, all sorts of coping mechanisms kick in as we go down unexplored avenues trying to believe we can do something, anything, This is one of those moments. Me, I turn to art, like I always do. So today I'd like to showcase the work of Marina Skugareva, born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1962. I don't know

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Personal protection: America's love story with firearms

Beyond the Canvas

Dec 12, 2021
1 min

Personal protection: America's love story with firearms

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” - Second Amendment of the American Constitution (ratified in 1791). I'm not even going to get into the relevance to today's society of something written 230 years go (a militia?). Suffice to say that the United States are home to more privately-owned firearms than human beings. That's right, 393 million guns versus 328 million peop

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Beyond the Canvas

Nov 27, 2021
1 min

The human cost of Black Friday

It's that time of year again, the retail bonanza that is Black Friday is upon us. Although there have been warnings that in 2020 more than 90% of alleged super deals were actually the same price or cheaper in the six months prior the sales event, an estimated 60% of adults in the UK will be making purchases for a total of £8.7 billion. Deleting my Amazon account just over a year ago was one of my proudest and self-righteous consumer moments. My brother mocks me for my micro r

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Beyond the Canvas

Nov 24, 2021
2 min

Safe and legal routes for refugees NOW

'My piece is not talking about old slave ships; it's about what happens today' says Romuald Hazoumé about his multimedia installation 'La Bouche du Roi' (The King's Mouth), now on show at the Rijksmuseum’s Slavery exhibition. Finally, the museum world starts tackling its colonial past and attempts to tell the true story of how the Golden Age of European imperialism came about and flourished. The Beninese artist shaped over 300 petrol cans into tribal masks and piled them up t

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A museum for change: the Museum of Homelessness, London

Beyond the Canvas

Oct 16, 2021
2 min

A museum for change: the Museum of Homelessness, London

From the Wunderkammers of Renaissance to this day, the Global West has a museum for everything. From sex to death, from vaginas to phallic specimens, from lawnmowers to chamber pots, there's a museum for it. It's how we showcase, celebrate, preserve, categorise, educate, shape narratives and tell stories. The Museum of Homelessness is a charity run by people who have themselves been homeless. I believe this may be one of the very rare instances when a community has taken cont

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Viva Vittoria: knitting against violence

Beyond the Canvas

Oct 9, 2021
1 min

Viva Vittoria: knitting against violence

Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation and a public health epidemic. It occurs daily across the world and is widely underreported. Globally, an estimated 736 million women aged 15 and older have been subjected to some sort of physical, sexual or psychological violence at least once in their life. That's almost 1 in 3 of us. Thanks to the generosity of knitters from all social and cultural backgrounds, since 2015 Viva Vittoria has been covering Italy's mo

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Speaking truth to power: the legacy of Anna Politkovskaya

Beyond the Canvas

Oct 7, 2021
2 min

Speaking truth to power: the legacy of Anna Politkovskaya

It's been 15 years to the day since Anna Politkovskaya was murdered for fearlessly and relentlessly telling the truth. Anna was gunned down in the entrance hall of the block of flats where she used to live in Moscow. An investigative journalist with Novaya Gazeta, Anna was a staunch human rights advocate and a strident critic of the Kremlin. I have read all her books, often struggling to make sense of a reality that is far, far away from mine. "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter

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Photo print fundraiser in support of women journalists in Afghanistan

Beyond the Canvas

Sep 21, 2021
1 min

Photo print fundraiser in support of women journalists in Afghanistan

Like many, I have been following the recent events unfolding in Afghanistan. I have mostly been feeling sad and powerless while thinking about how badly the Taleban takeover has affected our Afghani sisters' hard-won rights from the comfort of my home where I enjoy peace and freedom. It's easy to get cynical and think that throwing money at something so huge and tragic doesn't do anything to solve the problem, but the reality is that women journalists in Afghanistan are facin

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Beyond the Canvas

Sep 2, 2021
2 min

The day Gilead came to Texas

Earlier this week, a near-total ban on abortions has come into effect in the state of Texas. This means that after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women don't even know they are expecting, it will be impossible to legally terminate a pregnancy. And no, there will be no exceptions in case of rape or incest. What's more, this new law allows citizens to sue abortions providers as well as anyone helping a woman to have an abortion. Say a friend is driving you to the clinic, yes

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Beyond the Canvas

Aug 11, 2021
2 min

The meaning of freedom in 2021

It's been a year since the last presidential elections in Belarus. As Alexander Lukashenko was being crowned for the 6th consecutive time, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest. I remember seeing photos and video footage and realising how much courage it took to just be out there in a country where a violently repressive regime has all but wiped out independent media, arrested political opposition leaders forcing them out of the country and where any

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Beyond the Canvas

Aug 1, 2021
2 min

The memory of open wounds

There are wounds so deep they never really heal. They are the wounds we share with other people, whether we know them or not, the wounds that remain open no matter how long it's been since they were inflicted. These wounds define us, they speak of who we are and where we come from. This is the story of one of these wounds. On the morning of Saturday 2 August, at 10:25am, a time bomb hidden in an unattended suitcase detonated inside Bologna railway station. The explosion was s

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